Six. Constructivism and poststructuralism

Six. Constructivism and poststructuralism

Learning objectives

· Understanding the differences between rationalist and constructivist IR theories

· Knowledge of the main concepts of constructivism/poststructuralism

· Application of these concepts to questions of international politics

· Knowledge of constructivist explanations for continuity and change in international politics

The power of ideas

The years nineteen eighty-nine to ninety-one witnessed a spectacular cascade of historical events. First, the Berlin Wall, the symbol of the post-World War Two division of Europe, fell. This was followed by the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance under Soviet Russia's domination in which most East European states were more or less willing members. After the dissolution of the Pact, these countries embarked on a process of fundamental political transformation towards democratic regimes. Finally, the superpower Soviet Union itself disintegrated into fifteen independent parts, though Russia remained the largest country in the world by territory. Since then, there has been an intense debate about the causes of these completely unexpected developments. Many, mostly conservative, commentators assumed that the American policy of strength, embodied in particular by Republican President Ronald Reagan, was ultimately the main factor. Realists tend to agree. They argue that the realization by Soviet leaders of having lost the necessary capability to compete has to be seen as the core cause of the end of the Cold War, and that differentials in material power sealed the fate of the Warsaw Pact.

Other interpretations, however, pointed to the internal contradictions and dynamics of the Soviet system: '[Soviet President] Gorbachev's determination to reform an economy crippled in part by defense spending urged by special interests, but far more by structural rigidities, fueled his persistent search for an accommodation with the West. That persistence, not SDI (Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative), ended the Cold War.' This quotation by two well-known IR theorists is from an article in the news magazine Atlantic Monthly. It clearly pertains to the liberal-domestic theory of change and continuity, which we got to know in Chapter Four. According to this lens, the new leadership of the Soviet Union recognized that a dynamic society could never emerge due to the entrenched sclerosis of the political and economic system. Soviet leaders were forced, therefore, to undertake comprehensive reforms, which set in motion the above-mentioned unintended chain reaction.

Both interpretations have some plausibility, and both are possibly correct to a certain extent. The point of explaining complex events in the social sciences is not to find the one and only true solution, as in most natural sciences, but to provide the best plausible explanation based on solid evidence and valid methods. The realist and liberal explanations cited above have a problem insofar as they leave open the question of why the unexpected collapse occurred at this specific time, after decades of both arms races and mismanagement in the communist bloc. Precisely the indeterminacy of these rationalist theories and their inability to foresee the fundamental shift that took place at the end of the Cold War was a core factor giving rise to a new and highly productive school of IR theories in the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. These theories argued that it was not fixed interests derived from international and domestic structures, but rather profound ideological changes that transformed the outdated antagonistic attitudes of elites and populations on both sides. These ideological changes were caused by new ideas spreading through transnational networks, and by the intensification of global communication. The old friend-enemy distinction and superpower rivalry dissolved - at least temporarily - and entrenched national interests were re-defined.

The argument that new ideas and identities are fundamental to explaining change in international politics, and that the latter is not determined by fixed structures independent of human interpretation, is the basic tenet of a broad theoretical perspective on international politics that has continued to grow over the past thirty years and whose many different ramifications are subsumed under the umbrella term of constructivism. This school of theories comprises many different outlooks, ranging from 'conventional' to 'radical' constructivism. While many constructivists continued to adhere to an ontology that assumes that there is an objective reality that can be grasped with scientific methods and which is shaped by subjective factors, such as ideas, frames, ideologies, etc., others depart more radically from rationalist theories. They argue that objective reality has no fixed essence beyond our attempts to make sense of it through language and practice. This more radical understanding of the world is advocated by poststructural approaches, which will be discussed in the second part of this chapter.